ABSTRACT
People can refer, i.e. identify or select, something so that it can be talked about with some elementary gestures if the thing (or a representation of it) is visible and near to hand. Otherwise people must use a nominal phrase to describe the referent and tell the addressee that they are referring to something. The semantic distinction between predicative and equative uses of a nominal lies in whether it is used to describe an individual already identified or to refer to an individual that is claimed to be the same individual that was already identified. In distinction to these two uses, an adjective (usually) is called attributive when it is used only to help select the individual being referred to, but predicative when it describes an individual already identified. The denotation of a word includes anything to which one can refer with the word, so people come to the real linguistic act, referring.
